Scratch... Yawn... Sniff...

I thought better of making the title Yawn... Scratch... Sniff...

Well, as the old saying goes... no news is good news.

And so it is... at least around here.

Not too too much has changed over the last two months... he said sheepishly. By glancing at the last posting here on the main page, I see it's been close to two months... I did post something on my page on the 22nd of June, so it hasn't been two months since I posted anything at all, just here.

I plod along on the house... I would be a touch further, but we ran out of siding and have had to wait and wait and wait for the next order to be delivered. Through a series of snafus which include misquoted price per linear foot (under cost... which incidentally got the order canceled) to a purchase order that didn't get forwarded on... in this case to the supplier... in all it red flagged three times, and not once did they call to let me know that it was in limbo. So at long last it's getting delivered tomorrow all 7,008 linear feet of it. Julie has seen the light... this time pre-primed. So two months for something that should've taken two weeks... just another banana peel tossed underfoot and about a month lost on putting up siding. On the upside, it's given me a bit of a break... but honestly, there isn't time for that now... Sept. 27th will be here before we know it.

We managed to finally rid ourselves of the storage space (money) black hole. Not that we wanted to continue paying month after month after month, but the last straw came when there was going be another price increase taking us over the $250.00 mark... totally outrageous. The increase was going in to effect on the 23rd of this month... so this past Monday. We emptied out the unit over that previous weekend and had a few loads left Monday morning before we could call it empty. Julie did a great job of getting all the tedious little stuff out (I had my share of it, but I hate that stuff) and I handled the big stuff... we took turns loading up the van, but don't tell anyone... it's still full from the very last load. So when 10:30am rolled around on Monday morning, I waited at the unit (they have to inspect it) and sent Julie off to say that we are out of here.

They told her that we were going to have to pay about $8.00 for the day. See, the gate is operational from 6am to 10pm... the office is closed on Sunday and didn't open until 9:30am Monday morning. Our hope was to be empty before the office opened... we missed by an hour. Anyway, they wanted us to pay the eight bucks... that's the cost of one day. They said that they could have rented out the unit. Ummm... hello... it's only ten-thirty in the morning... you still have time... and never mind all the other empty units our size. Needless to say Julie protested and eventually won out. Julie said that there was another customer in there (no doubt looking at our unit wondering why it wasn't ready an hour ago) and she figured they gave in to shut her up and get her out.

What else...

Oh... Emmah's Make-A-Wish wish has been granted. Her wish was to replicate our camping trip from 2001... so that's what we're going to do. We have started the planning recently... it will be a tad bit different than the '01 trip, but a long road trip just the same. We will be pulling the kids out of school for it since they will be back in as we will be heading out after the school year starts. It will also be different in that we have an eight seat vehicle and each seat will be filled with a butt. Which means eight butt's worth of clothes and gear too. Last time, we were in a seven seat vehicle and filled only five... Jake was just a baby then. We will be giving a true test to the trucks DVD player. We'll see if we can pull our stuff together and get out on time this time. Every trip... and I mean every... we always leave hours after we planned on leaving. I said to Julie that we should start packing now to ensure that we'll not have to pull an all-nighter to get on the road. I imagine that if we were to do so, that it would ensure nothing... just a bunch of kids wondering where all their clothes are... pretty much like they do already.

Emmah has started the last phase of her therapy... the bio-therapy. She's taking a high dose of isotretinoin... also known as accutane. It's two weeks on two weeks off for six cycles... she'll finish around mid-December.

Jake lost another tooth recently and Ana has cut her two bottom. Speaking of bottom, Ana is a bottomless pit... that kid can pack it in. Of all the kids, she's the slowest to develop. Not that we're worried... merely an observation is all. She's sitting and rolling over, but that's about as far as it goes. I could be mistaken, but most of the other kids were starting to crawl by now (9 months) and Rachael was practically walking on her own already. I say it's cuz we had her in the hospital. It was a sluggish birth and in order to ensure that she was okay... they put a screw into her head while in utero. It was a pressure transducer that they literally screwed into her head, but she's still cute... not so much she's screaming her blinkin' head off... which is about half the time that she's awake... which coincides with Julie being busy and not giving her the attention that she wants. I will do in a pinch and it works on down from there.

We recently took the truck in for some nagging little things... like a squeal from the passenger front tire. Julie took it in a few weeks back to get an oil change... I said that while they have up on the lift, have them rotate the tires... and while they're doing that, can they give the brakes a visual inspection. There were other things that I wanted checked out, but the main sand in my shorts was the brakes, that and I wanted them to inspect a leak. I spotted some hydraulic fluid on the ground in the same area of the squealing tire. FYI... I did check the brake fluid level and it was low, but not too low. Julie came back and said that they said that the brakes had about 30% wear left on them and that sometimes the humidity can cause them to squeal like that and what I saw was condensation run off from the AC and not hydraulic fluid. I said BS, I know the difference between water and hydraulic fluid and it's the wear indicator not the weather... we need new pads.

A week or so passes and I said that this is nonsense... I took it back in. In addition to our existing problem, it still had an outstanding recall on it... from January! They finally got the parts in and said that they would do the recall and while up, they would look at the brakes again. Well what do ya know... the outside pad had 30% left on it, but the inside pad had only 10%! Perhaps it was weather related after all... the weather was so nice that the mechanic wanted to get out of there! So for just under $250.00 later the front brakes are all better... the rear still has 50% and will probably will get done before the camping trip. Makes me wonder though... would they have stood behind the 30% story if there was extensive damage done to the rotor... if I hadn't brought it back in so soon after? I say that we would've been on our own even though it was due to incompetence and lack of effort on their part. I always assumed that a brake inspection would include looking at the rotor and both pads on each tire. But you know how that other saying goes... the one about assuming.

With that, I will assume that you've had enough.

Until the next time...

Keep on Keepin' UIYTAP